Guns

Time to end the insanity

Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. In 2010, guns took the lives of 31,076 Americans in homicides, suicides and unintentional shootings.

This is the equivalent of more than 85 deaths each day and more than three deaths each hour. 73,505 Americans were treated in hospital emergency departments for non-fatal gunshot wounds in 2010.
Forget new gun laws. Here’s what could really keep people from shooting each other.
President Obama relayed a message of hope and perseverance while delivering remarks at the memorial service for the five Dallas police officers killed by a sniper July 7.

President Obama relayed a message of hope and perseverance while delivering remarks at the memorial service for the five Dallas police officers killed by a sniper July 7. (Reuters) President Obama relayed a message of hope and perseverance while delivering remarks at the memorial service for the five Dallas police officers killed by a sniper July 7. (Reuters) In Dallas this week, President Obama spoke movingly of the five officers killed after a protest.
Dallas shooting and Texas’ open carry gun laws. After two days of turmoil over the killings of black men by police officers in Minnesota and Louisiana, a Black Lives Matter protest on Wednesday night ended in more violence.

Unidentified gunmen opened fire on police and protesters, killing 5 officers and wounding 7 others and at least two civilians. Shortly after the shooting, the Dallas Police Department released a photo of a man it was searching for as a person of interest in connection with the killing. During a press conference, police said the man was carrying an AR-15 rifle and wearing camouflage gear. “We know that rifles were used to injure and kill Dallas officers,” said Dallas police chief David Brown. The man was quickly identified on Twitter as Mark Hughes, the brother of protest organizer Corey Hughes. Then video emerged of Mark Hughes calmly turning his weapon in to a police officer:
This statistic about gun violence in America seems hard to believe, but is true. Texas mom killed by police after she shot two daughters to death, police say. When police pulled up to the manicured Houston subdivision Friday evening, after a flood of 911 calls directing them there, they found two young women lying in the street, their bodies bleeding from bullet wounds.

Nearby stood their mother, 42-year-old Christy Sheats. In her hand she held a gun. Authorities demanded she drop her weapon, according to the Fort Bend County Sheriff’s Office, but she refused.
Having a Gun in the House Doesn't Make a Woman Safer - Evan DeFilippis. Christy Salters Martin is a professional boxer and the owner of a concealed carry permit.

But when she attempted to leave her husband, she was shot with her own gun. Today, she cautions other women against making the same mistake. “Just putting a weapon in the woman’s hand is not going to reduce the number of fatalities or gunshot victims that we have. Too many times, their male counterpart or spouse will be able to overpower them and take that gun away.” Wayne LaPierre, executive vice-president of the National Rifle Association, has argued that firearms are a great equalizer between the sexes. A recent meta-analysis concluded what many people already knew: the availability of firearms is a strong risk factor for both homicide and suicide. It has long been recognized that higher rates of gun availability correlate with higher rates of female homicide.

Azle gun show draws large crowds after executive action. AZLE — Charles Montgomery takes his traveling gun show across the state of Texas.

"Now the manufacturers are catering to ladies, they are building firearms in different colors,” Montgomery said. “You can even get them in pink, which is sacrilege in my opinion.” You'll find just about every color or caliber at the Azle Gun Show.
Texas universities likely to permit guns in classrooms. The thousands of professors who attend the Modern Language Association's annual conventions usually talk literature, linguistics and language.

Time for the satiric gun-toting dystopia. – pegfleming

But last week in Austin, many took a break to focus on something outside the norm — guns.

Hundreds of professors from the group marched down Congress Avenue on Friday waving signs and chanting their opposition to Texas' new campus carry law. "Guns are not a teaching tool," they yelled.
Texas zoos struggle to limit guns under new laws. The next battle over gun rights in Texas may take place in an unlikely setting: the zoo.

A pair of new gun laws — one allowing license holders to openly carry handguns and another penalizing entities that improperly ban firearms on government-owned property — are posing a challenge for all institutions funded through private foundations but located on public property. Zoos are walking a particular legal tightrope if they want to keep firearms off their property. Both laws protect existing "gun-free zones," such as school campuses and courtrooms, and allow private businesses, amusement parks and educational institutions to ban weapons if they choose.
Thinking Rationally About Terror.

Earlier this winter, in the first week of December, I set sail for Antarctica.

During the cruise, which was arranged by the Origins Project, an academic institute that I run, I was to give a series of lectures about cosmology and other topics. As a physicist, I’ve always found cosmology to be a rational elixir; it distances me from ordinary concerns. In Antarctica, moreover, I looked forward to experiencing an otherworldly place where the presence of humanity seems to fade in the face of nature’s vastness—climate change notwithstanding, of course.
'New York Times' puts gun debate editorial on Page One. When Gun Violence Meets Ideology. San Bernardino is No. 13—the thirteenth mass public shooting in the United States in the past week.

Domestic Terrorism and America’s Gun Dilemma. Is there anything left to say about America’s self-destructive passion for firearms? Perhaps this. From a theoretical point of view, we are faced with a classic collective-action problem. Clearly, it would be in everybody’s interest if there were far fewer guns out there, especially fewer of the military-style weapons that also lend themselves to the massacre of civilians—as we discovered yet again on Wednesday, when, according to officials, a twenty-eight-year-old man, Syed Farook, and a twenty-seven-year-old woman, Tashfeen Malik, opened fire at an office party in San Bernardino, California, killing at least fourteen people and injuring seventeen. But since there are already an estimated three hundred million guns in private hands (nobody knows the exact number), and U.S. gun laws are so lax that many Americans believe that they need a weapon, or many weapons, to defend themselves and their families.

How Often Do Mass Shootings Occur? On Average, Every Day, Records Show. Photo More than one a day. That is how often, on average, shootings that left four or more people wounded or dead occurred in the United States this year, according to compilations of episodes derived from news reports. Including the worst mass shooting of the year, which unfolded horrifically on Wednesday in San Bernardino, Calif., a total of 462 people have died and 1,314 have been wounded in such attacks this year, many of which occurred on streets or in public settings, the databases indicate. It is impossible to know whether the number of such shootings has risen in recent years because the databases go back only a couple of years.

Where gun stores outnumber museums and libraries. Photo by Flickr user Ryan Keene, used under a Creative Commons license Many readers took heart in the news last week that museums in the U.S. outnumber McDonald's and Starbucks restaurants — combined. But like so many other quantifiable preferences that Americans have, there's a political dimension to the affinity for museums. Just last week, a Pew Research Center survey found that liberals are much more attached to their museums than conservatives are: 73 percent of "consistently liberal" Americans say that being near museums and theaters is an important factor in choosing where to live. Only 23 percent of consistently conservative Americans say the same. Considering that divide, I thought it might be useful to map museums and libraries against an institution that conservatives might be more fond of: gun stores.

Because this is our cry to God now. – pegfleming

Boy fatally shoots mom in accident at Idaho store. Guns, shootings, etc.
IPV_Guns. ShootingTracker.com. Forget about changing the Second Amendment. And stop focusing on mass killings.
One map that puts America's gun violence epidemic in perspective. The United States owns way, way more guns per capita than the rest of the world.
Marco Rubio Pushes Conspiracy Theory On Obama And Guns. In a debate held in Charleston, South Carolina, a city that has witnessed a recent mass shooting, the GOP candidates were asked about how reduce gun violence if elected to the White House. Many responded instead by criticizing President Obama for announcing a set of executive actions last week that increases funding for background checks, investigations of criminal gun vendors, and mental health care.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) went further than his rivals, floating the popular conspiracy theory that President Obama harbors plans to take away Americans’ firearms. Watch: “I am convinced if this president could confiscate every gun, he would,” Rubio told the cheering audience.
From 2004 to 2014, over 2,000 terror suspects legally purchased guns in the United States.